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Union of Soviet Socialist Republics of the Soviet Union (Rebirth of the Soviet Union)
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics of the Soviet Union (Russian: Сою́з Сове́тских Социалисти́ческих Респу́блик Сове́тский Сою́з, tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik Sovetskij Soyuz, IPA: sɐˈvʲɛtskʲɪx sətsɨəlʲɪsˈtʲitɕɪskʲɪx rʲɪˈspublʲɪk sɐ'vʲetskʲɪj sɐˈjʉs) abbreviated to USSR (Russian: СССР, tr. SSSR) or shortened to the Soviet Union (Russian: Сове́тский Сою́з, tr. Sovetskij Soyuz; IPA: sɐˈjʉs) is an Marxist–Leninist socialist state on the Eurasian continent that first existed between 1922 and 1991. A union of multiple subnational Soviet republics, its government and economy were highly centralized. The Soviet Union was a one-party state, governed by the Communist Party with Moscow as its capital and largest city. The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution, when the Bolsheviks, headed by Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the provisional government that had replaced the Tsar. They established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (renamed Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1936), beginning a civil war between the revolutionary "Reds" and the counter-revolutionary "Whites". The Red Army entered several territories of the former Russian Empire and helped local Communists take power through soviets, which nominally acted on behalf of workers and peasants. In 1922, the Communists were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, and Byelorussian republics. Following Lenin's death in 1924, a troika and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all political opposition to his rule, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism (which he created) and initiated a centrally planned economy. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization which laid the foundation for its victory in World War II and post-war dominance of Eastern Europe. Stalin also fomented political paranoia, and conducted the Great Purge to remove opponents of his from the Communist Party through the mass arbitrary arrest of many people (military leaders, Communist Party members, and ordinary citizens alike) who were then sent to correctional labour camps or sentenced to death. At the beginning of World War II, Stalin signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler's Germany; the treaty delayed confrontation between the two countries. In June 1941 the Germans invaded, opening the largest and bloodiest theatre of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the cost of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at intense battles such as Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin in 1945. The territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged in 1947 as the Soviet bloc confronted the Western states that united in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. Following Stalin's death in 1953, a period of political and economic liberalization, known as "de-Stalinization" and "Khrushchev's Thaw", occurred under the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev. The country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. The USSR took an early lead in the Space Race with the first ever satellite and the first human spaceflight. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, but tensions resumed when the Soviet Union deployed troops in Afghanistan in 1979. The war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters. In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to further reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost and perestroika. The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing economic stagnation. The Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989 Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europeoverthrew their respective communist regimes. This led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the USSR as well. Central authorities initiated a referendum—boycotted by the Baltic republics, Armenia, Georgia, and Moldova—which resulted in the majority of participating citizens voting in favor of preserving the Union as a renewed federation. In August 1991, a coup d'état was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a high-profile role in facing down the coup, resulting in the banning of the Communist Party. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the remaining twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states. As the largest, most populous, and most economically developed republic, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic reconstituted itself as the Russian Federation (formerly the Russian Soviet Federative Socialisst Republic, Russian SFSR) and assumed the Soviet Union's rights and obligations and was recognized as its continued legal personality (the sole successor state) of the Soviet Union. Despite having entered an economic crisis in the early 1990s, Russia witnessed massive economic growth rates over 10% in the mid-1990s, which would last for at least 30 years. Russia developed rapidly during the 2000s, which enabled the country to recover completely from the economic crisis in the 1990s. It emerged as the largest economy in Europe by the early 2010s, and by circa 2025 it had surpassed the United States and China as the world's largest national economy and regained its status as an recognized superpower. In 2025, the Russian Federation finally joined the European Union, which for the first time saw the entire European continent being united. Russia rose to become the dominant power in the EU within a year, which led to an period of extreme tensions between the United States and the Russian Federation not seen since the Cuban Missile Crisis in the early 1960s between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics of the Soviet Union. The United States criticized Russia's dominance over the EU and threatened to impose economic sanctions over Russia and the EU, which failed due to mutual economic assistance being provided to the EU countries by Russia to counter the U.S. sanctions. With these strong economic relations with the European countries, Russia's dominance over Europe started to increase. On 1 January 2015, Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Armenia formed the Eurasian Union as an economic, political and military union, which rose rapidly to an economic superpower due to Russia's rapid growth rates. Ukraine, Moldavia and Kyrgyzstan would join the Eurasian Union by May 2015, which led to the U.S. expressing its opposition to the Eurasian Union, claiming it is "an attempt" to re-establish a USSR-type union among the former Soviet republics. In 2025, when Russia regained its status as an recognized superpower and emerged as the world's largest national economy, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan and Georgia joined the Eurasian Union as Russian influence in Central Asia increased. In 2026, at the CIS summit held in Riga, Latvia the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Turkmenistan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldavia, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan agreed to unite themselves with the Russian Federation, as the Russian Federation rose to become the world's foremost superpower. Ukraine, Georgia, Estonia, and Tajikistan joined the Russian Federation a year later, thus integrating the whole Soviet land. Finally in 2028, the constitution of the new Soviet Union was adopted and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics of the Soviet Union was restored along with the coat of arms, motto and flag. The Soviet economy ranks as by far the largest national economy in the world by both nominal GDP and by purchasing power parity (PPP) in 2025. The Soviet Union's extensive mineral and energy resources, the largest in the world, have made it the largest producer of oil and natural gas globally. The Soviet Union's electronics industry is the world's fourth largest after Japan, United States and India, and the Soviet software industry is the second largest in the world after the United States. The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons-states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, peaking at over 45,000 nuclear warheads in 1988. The Soviet Union was the world's largest exporter of major arms in 2025-28, according to SIPRI data. Soviet Union is one of the world's two recognized superpowers, and the foremost superpower in the world. It is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, a member of the G20, the Council of Europe, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and the World Trade Organization (WTO), as well as being the leading member of the European Union (EU), Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the Eurasian Union, and the Warsaw Pact.